Sunday, October 13, 2013

Conrack (1974)

Southern novelist Pat
Conroy has enjoyed a productive relationship with Hollywood; of the four theatrical
features adapted from Conroy’s books, one is a glossy, Oscar-nominated
melodrama (1991’s The Prince of Tides),
one is a respected character study that also received Oscar-nomination love
(1979’s The Great Santini), and only
one is middling (1983’s The Lords of Discipline).
The other Conroy adaptation (which was, chronologically, the first cinematic
translation of his work) is a small-scale charmer drawn from a vivid episode in
the author’s early life. Before embarking on his literary career, Conroy worked
as a teacher in an impoverished and mostly African-American community located
on a tiny island in South Carolina. Adopting a hip, humanistic approach that
rubbed conservative administrators the wrong way, Conroy made friends among
students and their families but was fired for refusing to treat his charges
with the cynicism that was previously the norm. Translating his struggles into
art, Conroy wrote an autobiographical book called The Water Is Wide, which formed the basis of this film.

Adapted by
the reliable team of Martin Ritt (director) and Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving
Ravetch (screenwriters), Conrack
stars Jon Voight as Pat Conroy, who is portrayed as the quintessential rebel
with a cause. Pat drifts into his new job filled with bold educational
aspirations and a deep desire to treat the people he encounters as human
beings, rather than statistics or stereotypes. Continuing the long tradition of
heroic-teacher movies that stretches all the way from Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) to Mr.
Holland’s Opus (1995) and beyond, Conrack
focuses equally on the noble sacrifices of a dedicated educator and the way
students’ lives are elevated by the nurturing qualities of a supportive
classroom environment. In lesser hands, this material could have been
saccharine, especially given the way racial divisions in the story create
opportunities for cheap moralizing. Yet because Ritt and his collaborators
approach the story with such realism and taste, shooting the film on real
locations and eschewing cheap sentiment, Conrack
feels like a believable sketch of a difficult challenge faced by a principled
man. (Make what you will of the self-aggrandizement inherent to
autobiographical material that positions the author as a saintly figure.)

Ritt’s conscientious approach is supported beautifully by Voight’s warm and
funny performance in the leading role. Whereas Voight sometimes slid into
show-boating tearfulness in later dramas, he’s spot-on here, channeling the
indignation of a decent man faced with a stubborn system—and the genuine joy of
a born leader who finds just the right followers. Marching behind Voight is an
eclectic supporting cast (including Hume Cronyn, Antonio Fargas, Paul Winfield,
and Madge Sinclair) all of whom hit their respective notes of guilelessness and
inflexibility in credible ways. FYI, Conroy’s source material was revisited for
a 2006 TV movie, which bore the book’s original title, The Water Is Wide. And, in case you’re wondering, the title Conrack comes from a persistent mispronunciation
of his Conroy’s surname that he encountered on the job in South Carolina.

Sounds quite good, I dig me some Voight in this era, but lord if Conroy isn't one of the worst, most purply, most pretentious of bestselling writers. PRINCE OF TIDES is so hilariously over the top BAD I couldn't put it down!